Just as I was arriving home on Saturday evening, I received a call from Amanda who said she had lost her wedding ring in a small grassy area next to public pool. She had removed the ring to apply lotion on her daughter and had placed the ring in her jeans pocket. Some time later, she noticed the ring missing and searched with many friends on their hands and knees but no success. I had plans that night with the wife and some friends but agreed to stop by the pool to see if it was going to be an easy recover. The area was small so I had high hopes. The good news was that she hadn’t left that grassy area with the jeans, the bad news was the ground there was literally carpet bombed with coins and other metallic junk! You could not swing the coil without getting at least 3 signals.

I did a complete grid but couldn’t get a surface signal in the gold range other than some pull tab ends and foil so we figured it must have been picked up by someone earlier. She thanked me for my efforts and I left to keep my evenings’ appointment. I was 98% sure that the ring was not in that area but that last 2% was bugging me. With that many targets and their signals overlapping, I figured there was still a chance that the ring was masked by them so I returned the next morning before the pool opened and the nice people running the place let me in to complete my search.

I figured I would remove everything that made a noise and if the ring was there, it would be found. After completing a 10X10 foot area and sweating buckets in the hot sun, I had found someone else’s ring, 31 quarters, 14 dimes, 6 nickels, and 28 pennies along with a dozen pull tabs and other assorted stuff but not the ring I was looking for. I had just started on the next 10X10 area and got another nice low tone that had already produced the nickels and pull tabs but this time I could see just a tiny glint of sparkle through the grass which I knew was going to be good. Yup, her ring had been stepped on and pushed most of the way into the sod but just a sliver was still exposed. I made my favorite type of phone call and met Amanda near by to return her ring. After having resigned herself to the thought that the ring was gone forever, my phone call made her the happiest woman in Poway. Here’s the ring (sorry about the blurry photo! Believe me, it’s beautiful) and Amanda and her daughter.